Tainted Cascade. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ plenty of pools of cool water among the trees, but the moss on the rocks tainted those, making it a hundred times more potent than shine, or even jolt. The mossy water was what Big Joe used to poison the waterfall near the Great Salt, and a score of artisan wells. In this part of the Deathlands, nobody sane drank water until it had been boiled for longer than a man could hold his breath, and most folks did it twice, just to make sure.

      Rising no higher than five stories, the buildings were neatly sheered off at exactly the same height, a sure sign that a nukestorm had swept across the land, the flying bridges, and warships and megatons of debris simply annihilating anything they encountered. However, the town of Trevose had been built inside a sort of depression in the ground, not quite a valley, and not quite an arroyo. So the thundering maelstrom merely passed by overhead, cutting off anything that reached above the height of the surrounding hills.

      “Do you really think that we can do this?” Rose asked, hefting the Uzi. “Hit at Big Joe on his home turf?” It had taken her hours to figure out there was no safety switch. The handle of the rapid-fire had a sort of lever along the back that was depressed when making a fist. When it clicked, you could shoot, but not before. It was the damnedest thing she had ever heard of.

      “We’ve never had a better chance,” Petrov stated, working the bolt on his longblaster.

      Turning a corner, the gang moved past a church covered with thick moss, and abruptly stopped in their tracks. Unexpectedly, the streets were clean of any ivy or kudzu, even the leaves had been swept away. The lush greenery on the sidewalks was chopped neatly off at the curb. A wide, smooth boulevard extended directly to a large brick building that dominated the rest of the ruins, even though it was only four stories tall.

      Encircling the building were old, rusty pikes topped with the decaying heads of the people and muties who had been stupe enough to cross Big Joe and so had paid the ultimate price. The walls had been painstakingly patched with different color bricks from a hundred buildings until the outside was a strange mosaic of conflicting colors, and rumored to be thicker than the defensive wall around most villes. There were no windows. Those had also been bricked shut until there were tiny slots where the people inside could fire out with blasters and crossbows.

      The only visible door was solid bronze, heavily deco rated with eagles, flags and other totems of power. The metal was covered with countless small dents from blasters. Flanking the door was a wooden catapult and an iron cannon so old that the metal had turned green in color.

      However, the truly terrifying aspect was the intact USAF jet fighter perched on the rooftop. Angled downward, the sleek skykiller looked as if it was about to do a bombing run and unleash untold horror on the denizens of the Deathlands.

      Easing back around the corner, Petrov and the others moved back into the shadowy foliage before daring to speak. The sight of the aircraft disturbed the four people more than they wished to admit.

      “So, that’s the Boneyard, eh?” Charlie said in false bravado. “I’ve seen better.”

      “In your dreams.” Petrov snorted. “That fragging—” he paused before saying the ultimate curse word “—that…that plane scares the ever-loving drek out of me.” The man tried not to shiver, and failed. Death from above. During the past nuclear war that had been more than just a colorful phrase: it was a painfully accurate description of how the world had ended.

      “So, how are we going to handle this?” Thal rumbled quizzically. “Nobody’s ever gotten inside and out again alive. Except for Big Joe and his troops.”

      “I have,” Petrov said unexpectedly.

      At that, Rose gasped in shock. “You used to run with Big Joe?”

      “No,” the man replied, turning away from the Boneyard to zigzag deeper into the greenery. “Now, here’s the plan…”

      “WHOA, GIRLS! Whoa!” Doc commanded the team of horses in a gentle tone, loosening his grip on the reins to bring the rattling wag to a ragged halt. “Easy now, girls! Easy, there.”

      As the exhausted horses stood sweaty and panting, Ryan quickly reloaded the stolen longblaster while the rest of the companions hurriedly climbed out of the cage.

      Taking the other flintlock rifle, Jak loaded it with sure fingers, then hefted the bulky weapon, only to switch sides to his undamaged arm. The rifle was in poor shape, nowhere as clean as it should be, and there were notches cut into the stock to show the numbers of chills the previous owner had done. Jak scowled at that. Notches only damaged the wood, making it vulnerable to water damage. A wise man counted his friends, not his chills.

      “I don’t see anybody moving,” Mildred said cautiously, ramming powder, ball and cloth wad down the muzzle of the flintlock handblaster. There was only the soft rustle of the wind through the trees and a distant rumble of thunder.

      “Only one way to be sure,” Krysty growled, glancing upward. The clouds overhead were mostly orange and purple, which meant a storm was on the way. But there was no telltale reek of sulfur announcing an acid rain.

      Crawling under the front seat, J.B. unearthed a pair of heavy crossbows and a quiver of arrows, the crude iron tips slightly rusty, but still lethally sharp. Without his glasses these were useless to him, so the man gave one to Krysty and the other to Doc. The arrows were shared equally. There were a lot more supplies tucked away in the shadows, including a rolled-up tent, blankets, pot and pans, bags of grain for the horses and what looked like a cardboard box of .22 cartridges coated in a thick layer of wax, but there were no predark blasters in sight.

      “We must be a long way from their home to storage this sort of stuff,” Ryan noted, resting the heavy longblaster on his shoulder. The Steyr weighed only seven pounds, while the flintlock monster was about twenty pounds, if not more.

      “At least it means there’ll be no more of the bastards,” Krysty replied, testing the balance on her new weapon. The wooden stock was expertly carved and well balanced, the bow made from the steel leaf-springs of a predark car. She had seen something similar many times before and knew the limitations of the homemade weapon. If blasters weren’t available, this was the standard weapon of the Deathlands.

      “Better let the horses rest for a moment, then we’ll go over and do a recce,” Ryan stated gruffly. Common sense dictated that the companions grab some water and clothes if possible. Cutting a deal with the slaves over the horses and wags would be a lot easier to negotiate if the companions were armed and dressed.

      Locating a couple of leather sacks slung underneath the wag, stashed there to keep them out of the sun, J.B. deduced one was a water skin and popped the top to take a long swig before passing it around to the others. It was gratefully accepted, especially by Krysty and Mildred, who wasted some by washing off their sticky gun hands.

      The other bag was securely tied, and J.B. broke a fingernail in the process. Hoping for his glasses, the man was sorely disappointed to find only hard rolls of bread, a lot of smoked fish and a couple of plastic bottles of shine. But there was no sign of their blasters, med bag, grens or any other of their missing possessions.

      Stripping the two corpses of their clothing, Doc found most of it too befouled to be of any use. So taking a knife from the belt of one of the fat men, he cut the man’s shirt and pants into ribbons. After tying one around his chest as a crude bandage, Doc handed another to Jak so that he could do the same. Krysty and Mildred declined the proffered strips.

      Feeling ridiculous, Doc layered several strips around his loins as a crude kilt. Born and raised in a time where a man or a woman showing an inch of bare skin СКАЧАТЬ